Tutoring 4

*Note to readers: My first year on active duty as a Marine, my squadron CO called me into his office and he told me he had a friend of a friend who'd adopted a child from Russia. He asked if I'd be willing to help this other lieutenant colonel and his wife make up a word list so they could communicate. I spent a couple of hours with them writing out things like: I'm hungry and I want ____ (list of choices.) I don't feel good and I need ____ (list of choices of what hurts.) He was seven and could read so all he had to do was point to the Russian and the parents knew he had a stomach ache or wanted juice.

A year later I got a very nice letter from the wife thanking me and letting me know how well little Sergei was doing. His vocabulary was exploding and he was doing very well in school.

I hadn't thought about it in quite a while, but when I did, it gave me the idea for this story which I had a lot of fun writing. I hope you enjoy it, too.

********

"Can you maybe point to it?" The mother used her finger to point toward the boxes of cereal. "Which one do you want, honey?" she asked the little girl who stood there motionless. "Mommy can't buy you anything unless you tell her what you want." She began touching boxes and found one with a big, orange tiger with black stripes. "How about this? These are grrrreat!" she said trying to imitate the commercial. Exasperated, she found a box with a tiny leprechaun on it and said, "These are magically delicious!"

He had no idea why the child, whose hair was neatly combed and who was also very well dressed wasn't answering, and he had no intention of getting involved as he grabbed a box of vanilla granola cereal and dropped it in his cart. It was none of his business so he simply said, "Excuse me," as politely as he could to the little girl who was standing in the middle of aisle and not moving. He also couldn't help but notice that the mother, who was also quite well put together was a very attractive woman. He smiled at her, but she was fixated on her daughter who was staring at her but not speaking.

The woman finally noticed him then reached for the little girl's hand as she apologized to the younger man. "I'm so sorry. I just adopted her and she doesn't speak a word of English other than 'please' and 'thank you.' Well, she knows 'yes' and 'no', too, but other than that, we can't communicate."

She pulled her daughter next to her as the younger man said, "That's wonderful. Do you mind me asking where she's from? She's beautiful, by the way."

"Oh, thank you. She really is beautiful, isn't she?" the mother beamed. "I don't know why or how, but the Russian government let her go even after Mr. Putin said no more adoptions of Russian children to Americans. However it worked out, I'm just so thrilled to have her."

The younger man pushed his cart to the side, knelt down and looked right at the little girl and said, "Привет. Как тебя зовут девочка?" He saw the little girl's eyes opened wide but didn't see her mother's do the same as he said hello and asked her name.

"Привет. Меня зовут Александра," she said.

"Alexandra? That's a very pretty name," he said in English.

"You speak Russian?" the mother said almost unable to believe what she was hearing.

"I do," he said flashing her a quick smile. "My mom was born in Ukraine and I grew up speaking it. Is there anything in particular I can help with?"

"Do you want the complete list or just the short one?"

He could tell she loved the little girl dearly, but the inability to communicate was frustrating her to death. Finding a Russian speaker in the middle of Cheyenne, Wyoming, was about as likely as meeting the leprechaun on the box.

The younger man laughed and said, "Let's start with the cereal. Are you trying to get her to tell you what she wants?"

"Yes! Yes! Can you teach me how to say 'which one'?"

"Sure, but first let me ask you something. Do you care if it's sugary or do you just want her to pick something?"

She looked into his cart and could tell he was healthy eater and said, "I'd prefer something without a lot of sugar, but at this point, I'll settle for anything."

"Got it." The younger man told her in Russian what was going and then gave her several relatively healthy choices.

"Вот это хочу!" she said, "I'd like that one!"

The man handed the box to the grateful woman and said, "The word for 'which one' is kah-KOI." He smiled then said, "Well, unless the thing you're taking about is feminine and then it would be kah-KA-ya. If it's neuter then it's kah-KO-yeh. Of course, if it's the object of what she wants it becomes kah-KOO-you."

"Oh, my God," the woman said. "That's insanely hard. What about the word 'doctor' or 'I'm sick'? Could you maybe just give me those? Are they any easier to say?"

"If you'll hand me your phone I'll record them for you along with the English meaning. I'll say in Russian, 'When you hear the one you need, point to the phone.' I'll say that first so she'll know options are coming. Then I'll say things like 'I'm hungry, thirsty, tired, sick, etc. I'll also put in a few other common, important words. That should hold you until she starts picking up words in English."

He looked at the little girl and told her in Russian, "Your mommy loves you very much and she really wants to be able to communicate with you. I'm going to give her a list of words to get you started." He quickly explained what he was doing and asked if she understood.

"Да. Все понятно!" She understood everything.

"How old is she?" he asked the mother.

"She just turned five and will be starting school next month so I'm anxious about making sure she can understand the most basic things. At least for safety reasons and the like."

He spent the next couple of minutes speaking into the phone and watched Alexandra smile as she heard her native tongue. He winked at her and made a silly face causing her to laugh as he spoke.

"What did you say? How do I do that? I haven't seen her laugh once, yet." He saw tears welling up in her eyes as she knelt down and hugged her daughter. "Her smile is so beautiful." She stood up and said, "I don't know how to thank you."

He handed her his phone and said, "I went ahead and put my name and number in your contact list just in case. I want you to feel free to call me anytime if you get so stuck it's driving you crazy or God forbid you have some kind of emergency. I promise you won't be bothering me."

"Thank you. Thank you SO much," she said. She was so overwhelmed with gratitude she threw her arms around him and hugged him right next to the Lucky Charms.

Alexandra giggled and the younger man turned around and said, "I think you're mommy is in love with me." That caused the little girl to burst out laughing which in turn made the mother laugh even though she had no idea what he'd just said.

"I don't what you just said but if it made my daughter laugh..." She wiped away another tear then told him, "I don't even know your name," she said. "Oh, sorry. I'm Libby, by the way. Libby Grant."

"Nice to meet you, Libby. I'm Shane Fields."

"You're a life safer, Shane. I can't possibly thank you enough. This is SO helpful. I've tried learning some words but the pronunciation is just impossible for me. I botch every word. I tried started with 'hello' and gave up after listening to it over a dozen times."

"Yeah, 'hello' a terribly hard word to pronounce. Instead of hello, just use 'hey there' which anyone can pronounce."

"Ha! You don't know me!" she said. As he talked with her, he was really taken aback by just how good-looking she was. She was not only beautiful and very nicely dressed, she was also wearing a huge diamond ring on her left hand. He'd always admired older, attractive women and had even dated a couple, but she was clearly off limits regardless of age or looks. Even so, she was just incredibly good looking.

"The word you need is pree-VYET. Go ahead, give it whirl." He repeated it then said, "Look at Alexandra then say it to her."

Libby bent down and said the word with decent pronunciation and she got an immediate reply of, "Привет, мамочка!"

When Shane told her she called her 'momma' Libby started crying. "Can you tell her how much I love her for me?" She was blinking away tears as fast as she could but it was a losing battle.

He knelt down by them both and said, "Твоя мамочка хотела бы тебе сказать что она страшно тебя любит." The little girl smiled then hugged her mother and told her she loved her like crazy, too, which Shane translated into English.

He watched them just hold each other for a while before the mother picked her up and held her. "I wish there was some way I could thank you, Shane."

"It's fine. Just watching you two is more than thanks enough." He grabbed his card and said, "I mean it, though. You call me. Anytime. And good luck!"

"I will and thank you again!" she said with genuine thanks.

"До свиданя, красивая девочка!" he said to Alexandra with another wink and a smile. He told her goodbye and said she was a pretty little girl which was very true. They all waved at each other and Libby thanked him yet one more time as he headed toward the next aisle.

Shane picked up a few more things to hold him over. As a single guy living on base in the Bachelor Officer Quarters or BOQ of F.E. Warren, the Air Force base located three miles west of Cheyenne, he did most of his shopping at the commissary. However, there were a handful of items he really loved like the vanilla granola cereal that the commissary didn't carry so once or twice a month he stopped in at the local Safeway or Albertsons.

He was checking out when heard his name called. He looked over his shoulder and saw Libby waving at him. "I'm so sorry. Can I ask you one more thing?"

Shane stood up, apologized to the person directly behind him and said, "Hold on. I'll be right there." He had maybe half a minute as the clerk rang up his items. "What's up?" he asked.

"I think Alexandra is telling me she needs to go to the bathroom, but I don't even know how to ask her."

He looked down at her and quietly asked if she had to 'go there, where even the Czar isn't carried.' She giggled again and nodded her head. "Yes, she does." He stood up and said, "Anything else?"

He started to walk away when Libby said, "Do you do any tutoring?"

He got back just in time to swipe his credit card and said, "Give me a call. I'm sure we can work something out."

As he was carrying his groceries out, he saw the two of them disappear into the women's rest room. He smiled thinking back on what it was like growing up with a mother who spoke English with a heavy accent and who often said things in English in rather odd ways causing people to snicker or give her a funny look. He knew that learning a foreign language was tough and mastering it was nearly impossible. Well, unless one learned it at home as a child. In that case, it was a piece of cake. Alexandra was young enough that she'd be utterly fluent in a couple of years.

On the way back to the base he tried not to think about Libby 'like that' but he found it nearly impossible. She had silky, golden blonde hair that was pulled back in a ponytail that was held there by a white scrunchy. He couldn't be sure but he thought she was most likely in her mid-thirties but with people taking such good care of themselves these days, she might even be 40 although she looked 30. Her skin was soft and smooth and even when she smiled he couldn't see any wrinkles around her eyes which were a true emerald green rather than the more common hazel color people often erroneously called green. Sure, she could be wearing contact lenses but either way, her eyes were amazing. Then again, so was her face. Okay, her body was just as fantastic and the little white sundress and white sandals she was wearing didn't hurt.

He felt a pang of jealousy as he envied her husband just before pulling up to the gate. He got out his ID card and handed it to the Security Forces person who saluted and welcomed him on base. That broke his train of thought and he managed to put Libby and Alexandra out of his mind at least for the time being.

The following morning he was up early like he always was and went out for a five-mile run. He put some earbuds in, turned up his iPod, and hit the road enjoying the best weather of the year in this god-forsaken place. Winter with its ever-present wind and cold, snowy weather would be back soon enough and last most of the year. Summers were short and Fields took advantage of every day of good weather either running or bicycling or even occasionally kayaking. These morning runs always cleared his head and set the stage for the start of a great day.

Shane had just turned 27 and had also just been promoted to captain at the five-year mark. He was a graduate of the Air Force Academy and had gone directly to flight school after graduation only to learn he'd developed enough astigmatism in his left eye to disqualify him from flying. He'd been offered several other choices, but decided to become a missileer and was sent to F.E. Warren after he qualified as a crew member in a Launch Control Center or LCC buried 31 feet underground. There, he and another certified crew member sat for 24 hours each shift waiting for one thing and one thing only—authorization from command authority to launch the nuclear missiles under their control. Both of them would follow a strict checklist verifying the legitimacy of the order, then insert their keys and simultaneously turn them thus launching one of the most powerful weapons on earth at some specified target half way around the world. It was an awesome responsibility but boring as hell most of the time. He spent the majority of that time studying for his master's degree which was essentially a requirement for promotion to major in today's Air Force. That was still five years away, but it would take most of that time to chip away at and complete all of the required courses.

He'd met someone the previous week and was planning to ask her out later that day. Fields had never had trouble getting dates, but Cheyenne, Wyoming proved to be a formidable challenge. It was home to the University of Wyoming, a perennial hunting ground for many single officers and those enlisted personnel who thought they had a chance at dating college co-eds. If not for that college campus, he shuddered to think what life would be like for a single airman.

Shane had no moral prohibitions about hooking up with them and he'd had reasonably good success doing so in the roughly four years he'd been there following the completion of missileer training. He was just getting to the point where it might be nice to find someone who was ready to get serious; someone who was also at that point in her life. Unfortunately for him that tended not to be 21-year old college girls. They were fun for a night or two or maybe even a few weeks, but anything beyond that was out of the question. With rare exceptions, they tended to be typical 21-year olds interested in superficial things like music, fashion, and reality TV, things that put Fields to sleep just thinking about them. It wasn't that he was the world's deepest thinker, he just enjoyed being able to carry on an intelligent conversation about world events or technological developments or even politics. Milk was fine, but he preferred meat and most co-eds offered mashed potatoes at best.

He hoped this girl, Heidi something-or-other, might be an exception to the rule. She was a 22-year old fifth-year senior majoring in philosophy and although he'd met her at a bar out in town, he was impressed when she mentioned the 'excluded middle' a basic law of logical thought which states that for any proposition, either that proposition is true, or its negation is true, during a conversation he overhead. He managed to worm his way into the conversation and they proceeded to have a spirited discussion over the differences of Aristotelian versus Kantian ethics. The fact that she was downright pretty hadn't hurt.

An hour and a half after starting his run, he'd showered and dressed and was headed to the Officer's Club for Sunday brunch when his phone rang. He smiled when he saw the name Libby Grant. He hit 'accept' and said, "Здравствуйте. Чем могу служить?" "Hello, how may I help you?"

He heard her laugh then say, "That first word sounded a lot like the word for 'hello' I was trying to learn. Was it?"

"You see! You can learn Russian," he told her. "What's going on?"

"I'm sorry to call so early, but..."

"Hey, I told you anytime and I meant it. Just let me know how I can help."

"Well, I was filling out the forms to register her for school and ended up bringing them home so I could use the information on the adoption paperwork to answer a bunch of questions. I didn't realize until I started looking at them this morning that they're all in Russian. ALL of them. I can't make sense of anything except her name and date of birth. Is there any way I could send these to you as an email attachment or something so you could help me understand them?"

"You could. Or I could just come take a quick look at them."

"Oh, no. I wouldn't think of taking your Sunday away from you. I feel bad enough bothering you already. I hate when people take advantage of an offer to help yet here I am doing that less than 24 hours after your very kind offer."

"I was just going to grab lunch, but I could be there in an hour or two."

"That sounds perfect," she said. He didn't anything for a few moments and then heard her say, "Or you could eat lunch with us if you'd like. I make a pretty mean BLT." She laughed slightly as she said, "I could leave out the bacon for you, of course."

"Well, I don't want to be the one interrupting your weekend, Libby. I'm sure you and your husband want to spend it with Alexandra, not some stranger."

There was silence for another few moments before she said, "Um...my husband passed away a couple of years ago. It's just me and Alexandra."

"I'm so very sorry," he said sincerely. "I saw your ring and assumed...Boy, I'm just...really sorry, Libby."

"No, it's okay. I can't take off my wedding ring yet but maybe someday."

He didn't want to admit it was one of the first things he always looked for when he saw an attractive woman, but it was true. He couldn't have missed hers were he trying. The ring itself was bright gold and very wide. And then there was the stone itself. It was HUGE. "If you're sure I'm not imposing, I'll take you up on your very kind offer and for the record, I do eat bacon."

"Just not very often, right?" he heard her say in a playful voice.

"You've got me pegged already, don't you?" he teased back. "Okay, let me know your address and I'll be there in a few."

"Great!" she replied. She told him where she lived and he punched it into the Maps App on his iPhone and turned around.

He wasn't surprised she lived in an upscale housing development, but it did peak his curiosity as to what she did for a living. Then again, if her late husband had been wealthy or had a large enough life insurance policy, she might have the luxury of being a stay-at-home mom. Or she could be a very successful woman in her own right. One way or the other, he'd know soon enough. As he drove down the long parkway which ran through the development he made a mental note to call Heidi as soon as he left.

He spotted the house number on the right side of the street and pulled into the driveway. Libby lived in a very nice, two-story home that looked to be relatively new construction. He saw a black Audi A3 sedan in the garage which told him very little. Yes, it was an Audi, but it was at the very low end and cost about as much as a Toyota Camry or a Nissan Maxima.

He rang the doorbell and heard the sound of a dog barking. "Cocoa, hush!" he heard Libby say. "Sit. Good girl."